Energy stocks gain, Anadarko up on earnings beat

Arch Coal declines 13% on big quarter miss

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Energy stocks traded higher Tuesday with Anadarko Petroleum Corp. leading the charge after the company swung to profit in the fourth quarter.

Shares of Anadarko
APC, -0.10%
gained 2.6% in morning trade. The company late Monday reported a profit of $203 million, or 40 cents a share, versus a loss of $358 million, or 72 cents a share, a year earlier. Excluding one-time items, per-share earnings rose to 91 cents from 85 cents. Anadarko posts profits.

It was a “good beat after adjustments, driven by higher output, lower costs and derivatives,” analysts at GHS Research said in a research note. “We expect a busy” first quarter with “active” Gulf of Mexico presence and potential for a joint venture or other partnerships in fields in Mozambique, they added.

U.S.-listed shares of BP PLC
BP, -0.97%
rose 1.4% as the company early Tuesday reported a 72% fall in profit in the fourth quarter. Production fell on asset sales and the company agreed to pay billions of dollars to settle criminal charges stemming from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. BP falls on lower output.

BP reported adjusted fourth-quarter earnings of $1.25 per share, whereas expectations hovered around a per-share earnings of $1.13. The beat, however, was mostly driven by a lower-than-expected tax rate, analysts at Simmons & Co. wrote in a note.

Among the top laggards in the S&P 500, shares of Diamond Offshore Drilling Inc.
DO, +2.63%
declined 3.8%. The company reported that fourth-quarter earnings declined 17%, but were still above Wall Street expectations.

The update on the company’s fleet, however, was negative, UBS analysts wrote in a note to clients. The company forecast 2013 fleet downtime above analyst estimates and higher than last year’s, the analysts said.

Arch Coal earlier Tuesday reported a fourth-quarter loss of $295.4 million, or $1.39 a share, compared to a profit of $71 million, or 33 cents a share, a year ago. Analysts had forecast a loss of 15 cents a share.

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